A complete and honest comparison of Airdna vs Mashvisor vs Transparent vs Keydata.
Like any financial investment, buying properties to rent outcomes with risk. The larger the value, the larger the risk – or potential return.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot on the line when buying an investment property.
However, there are ways you can minimize the risk, and the best way to do so is by using business intelligence (BI) and data tools.
In recent years, a number of BI and data tools designed to help people make smarter property investment decisions and improve revenue management have entered the market – and they’ve been game-changers for real estate investing. Some are calling this new wave of tools “proptech“, property technology to drive efficiencies in real estate.
These tools collect and crunch millions of data points every day. For example, they factor in seasonal trends, forecast future movements in the market, and much more.
In short, these tools provide you with the best possible data on a property to help you make an informed decision on what price you should pay and what return you can expect.
If you’re not using a BI tool, you’re increasing your risk. Especially if you’re trying to buy in an area, you don’t know anything about.
In this article, we’re looking at what BI property investment tools do, why they’re so important, and four of the best tools on the market to consider:
Why Use Business Intelligence/Data Tools for Property Investing?
Let’s be realistic. You can collect and analyze only so much data when deciding whether a property will be a good investment.
And it’s not a lot.
BI data tools collect and analyze millions of data points of information. Furthermore, they are powerful, fast, intelligent, and capable of doing the work of an entire data analyst team in a blink of an eye. An incredible tool that can do incredible work for the rental industry and real estate inventors.
Sounds impressive, right?
They really are.
The two main key benefits of using BI data tools for property investing include:
Profitable Property Investing
It feels safer to buy property in an area you know well. Yet, there are much better investment opportunities if you search further afield.
Data tools provide all the data you need to make an informed investment decision in cities worldwide. You don’t have to know the area. You don’t have to have been there. In short, all you need is the key financial metrics to make a decision.
These tools will calculate your potential return overtime on the purchase price of a property. Many investors can make profitable purchases on the other side of the country without ever seeing their property in person.
Optimizing Rental Income
Whether you already have a rental property or you’re working out what you can make on an investment – data tools provide dynamic pricing.
Dynamic pricing is when a daily rate is calculated by considering numerous market factors—things like competitor’s pricing and occupancy, seasonal trends, demand, and so on.
The result is an increase in occupancy, as well as an increase in revenue.
You should now be convinced that you shouldn’t decide without using a data tool. Read on for our review and comparison of four of the best tools on the market to help you decide which is best for you:
Airdna vs Mashvisor vs Transparent vs Keydata
Airdna
As a data tool, AirDNA closely monitors the performance of more than 10 million vacation rentals across more than 80,000 cities worldwide.
Certainly, that’s a lot of data. It’s not hard to see how this amount of data will give you valuable insights into how the rental market is performing in an area you’re interested in.
They call their tool Market Minder. You can start using Market Minder by typing in a zipcode or a city, and you’ll be taken to a page summarizing the information for that area.
You will then see all the key metrics you need to understand the rental potential for that area. Furthermore, some of the metrics Market Minder displays includes:
Number of active rentals
Average daily rate
Occupancy rate throughout the year
Potential revenue
Market growth
And much more
Essentially, everything you need to make an informed decision on whether or not you want to buy and/or rent out a property in the area.
The best part is that Market Minder is incredibly easy to use. You can literally scroll around an interactive map and zone in on areas you’re interested in, and check out how rental properties are performing.
Pros
Software is easy to use and clearly displays all the important information.
There is no doubt that Market Minder will save you a huge amount of time and money.
Market Minder has one of the largest data sets of any tool.
You can look at 80,000+ cities around the world.
Cons:
Freemium offering is limited, and scanning large areas is costly.
There are still cities they aren’t covering. Check they have data on cities you’re interested in before committing to a monthly plan.
Pricing:
There has a freemium plan, so you can get started right away and get a feel for their platform.
This plan has its limitations, though. You’ll need to update one of their paid plans to put their tool to the test and get the kind of data you need to decide on a property.
There are also three paid monthly subscription plans as follows:
$19.95/mo – With this plan, you can analyze an area with less than 100 active listings.
$39.95/mo – With this plan, you can analyze an area with 100-1,000 active listings.
$99.95/mo – With this plan, you can analyze an area with more than 1,000 active listings.
Keydata is a vacation rental data source trusted by 1,600+ property managers.
The data, analytics, and insights Keydata provides helps property managers and investors track and improve the performance of their properties using ‘key data.’
What this means in simple terms is; Keydata gathers market data from a multitude of sources. Furthermore, it then analyzes that data using many BI tools and presents 30+ KPIs through an intuitive and easy to use dashboard.
As a property investor, Keydata takes all the heavy lifting off your hands. Moreover, if you’re currently using spreadsheets or several singular tools, centralizing everything through Keydata will save you endless time (and headaches). I can also improve the quality of your data to help you make more profitable decisions.
Pros
Integrates with all the popular property management systems.
Accurate, reliable data at your fingertips in real-time.
Presents 30+ KPIs that are important to all property investors.
A modern web app is simple to use and presents all the data easily usable format.
Cons:
No set pricing plans.
Lack of transparency on where they’re getting their data from.
Pricing:
Keydata does not have any set pricing or monthly subscription plans. If you want to learn more about pricing, you can book a free demo of their software or a call with their sales teams.
Mashvisor
Mashvisor is a real estate investment data analysis tool that has been around since 2014. They’ve come a long way in the last 7 years or so and are constantly releasing updates, new features, and adding more data to their database.
The core of their tools involves moving around and using an interactive map of the area you’re interested in buying a property in.
You’ll see key metrics like:
Available properties
Property listing prices
Potential cash on cash return for both traditional and Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com renting models
Cap rate if used as a traditional or Airbnb rental host
And much more
It’s really fast to narrow down and hone in on the exact types of properties you’re interested in. Moreover, you can drill down and search to a micro level, such as square feet, age, the number of rooms, and so on.
Once you find some properties that meet your criteria, you can then dig into the numbers to work out the potential return on your investment.
Mashvisor gives you detailed insights on things like:
Average rental price
Estimated occupancy
Startup costs and expenses
Basically, everything you need to calculate the potentially monthly revenue and return on your investment.
Mashvisor gives you detailed insights on things like:
Pros
The layout is intuitive and easy to use.
A good range of filters enables you to take a deep dive and narrow down your searches.
Mobile support and some third-party integrations.
In addition, there is an affordable starting price.
Cons:
Currently, it only has data for the US, and some cities are still not discovered.
No freemium plan to get a feel for the tool before committing to a monthly plan.
Pricing:
Mashvisor has three-tiered pricing plans as follows:
Lite – $17.99/mo – This plan allows you to analyze individual properties and get all the traditional and Airbnb ROI and income analysis.
Standard – $49.99/mo – This plan lets you widen your search analysis and look at information for neighborhoods and cities.
Professional – $74.99/mo – This plan enables you to analyze large datasets. It’ a great fit for agencies and full-time investors.
Transparent is a powerful data intelligence tool that helps property investors save time and make better decisions.
Moreover, it does this by providing unique insights on supply, distribution, competition, pricing, and demand by analyzing millions of market data points.
This software analyzes more than 35 million Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com vacation rental listings worldwide. For this reason, Transparent is the go-to for thousands of hosts, investors, and property managers worldwide.
The main features of Transparent include:
Tracking market rates and occupancy.
Analyzing demand events.
Monitoring competitors and supply.
Analyzing ratings and reviews.
Whether you’re looking to optimize your existing portfolio or invest in new properties, these four data sets will provide all the information you need to make an informed decision.
Pros
Detailed data-driven insights into rental markets across the globe.
The ability to analyze competitor reviews is a useful tool for market insights.
Graphs and other visuals make it easy to interrupt data at a glance.
Cons
It’s one of the more expensive tools.
Pricing:
Transparent has three pricing plans, from a Freemium plan to working out a bespoke custom plan that works for you.
Their Free plan gives you data for global booking channel supply shares and 2019 ADR, occupancy, and revenue.
It’s a good place to start, but you’ll need to upgrade to their paid plan to get all the data you need to make an informed investment decision.
Their Smart Rental Pro plan aims at companies or hosts managing 10 or more properties and costs €250/mo.
Things to Consider When Choosing BI Tools for Property Investing
Every property investor has different needs and wants when it comes to using property investment tools. And when considering Airdna vs Mashvisor vs Transparent vs Keydata, it’s important to take your time and carefully decide which is best for you.
Here are the main things to consider when trying to figure out which tool is best for you:
Will It Scale With You?
In short, some tools cater to investors starting out and looking for their first property, while some are better suited to help a seasoned investor hit the floor running.
You can easily become overwhelmed with a tool that does too much and offers too many insights, just as you can be held back by a tool that’s too simplistic.
Be sure to take the tool of your choice in for a test run and think about the future. See how easy it is to add more properties, how the pricing changes, and how easy it is to see an overview of multiple properties.
Does It Cater to Your Market Area?
One of the main areas that separate tools is data availability for different areas in the country and across the world.
Always check that the tool you’re interested in has all the up-to-date data for the areas you’re interested in before going ahead and paying for it.
How Easy Is It to Use?
Gathering all the data needed to make informed investment decisions is only worthwhile if it is easy to use and interpret.
Engineers create many tools and software, and user-testing comes later—another good reason to test out tools yourself before making a decision.
Conclusion
Which business intelligence tool between Airdna vs. Mashvisor vs. Transparent vs. Keydata should you pick?
As you can see from our reviews above, all of these tools are excellent property investment tools. However, they vary in functionality and are suited to property investors at different stages in their businesses.
In conclusion, we suggest booking and demo and testing two or more of them at the very least. Moreover, get a feel for how the tools work, how easy it is to work with the data – and check they provide insights into the areas you want to invest in.